Picturing the Land

Narrating Territories in Canadian Landscape Art, 1500-1950

Please note our Canadian shopping cart is down as we transition to UTP Distribution. While purchases cannot be made through our website at this time, you can find many of our titles at your local bookstore!

A sweeping account that places Canadian landscape art within Western cultural tradition.

The vast Canadian landscape has captured the imagination of visual artists since the first European contact. Although artistic engagement with the landscape has a long history, some periods have drawn considerable critical attention, while others have been left almost unexamined. Picturing the Land surveys work from coast to coast, from the earliest maps to postwar painting in English and French Canada, to provide a comprehensive view of Canadian landscape art.

Emphasizing the ways in which social, economic, and political conditions determine representation, Marylin McKay moves beyond canonical images and traditional nationalistic interpretations by analyzing Canadian landscape art in relation to different concepts of territory. Taking an expansive and inclusive perspective on Canadian landscape art, McKay depicts this tradition in all its diversity and draws it into the larger body of Western landscape art, broadening the horizon of future study, appreciation, and criticism.

Richly illustrated and filled with sophisticated and innovative commentary, Picturing the Land provides new and distinct histories of the landscape art of French and English Canada.

"An exciting and compelling study that provides an invaluable resource for historians and art historians in general and those engaged with art and visual culture in North America in particular." Maureen Ryan, Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory, University of British Columbia" ... while previous scholars have considered 'the dilemma of uniqueness' of Canadian art, McKay instead argues that artists in Canada were working well within the well-established tenets of Western civilization -- employing visual modes that had been employed since ancient times. A subtext of the book explores the sometimes divergent ways English and French artists have depicted the Canadian landscape through four centuries; this shines light on issues such as conquest and nationalism through Canada's history. Recommended." CHOICE

Marylin J. McKay is a professor of art history at NSCAD University and the author of A National Soul: Canadian Mural Painting, 1860s-1930s.

Illustrations | viiAcknowledgments | xviiIntroductionCanadian Landscape Art, 1500 to 1950 | 31 Geographies of the Mind Art-Maps of French and English Canada, 1500 to 1760 | 152 Place and Displacement Drawings and Watercolours in French and English Canada, 1600 to 1830 | 333 Hopes and Promises Resident Artists in English Canada, 1830s to 1860s | 644 Our Faith, Our Language, Our Institutions Territory and Sédentarisme in French Canada, 1830s to 1880s | 915 Arcadia, Eden, and Nationalism Farmland in English Canada, 1870 to 1915 | 1046 Promises of Survival Territory and Sédentarisme in French Canada, 1880s to 1940s | 1297 Man Hath Dominion Wilderness Landscapes in English Canada, 1870 to 1913 | 1478 A Canadian School for Sure Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, 1913 to 1930 | 1699 “O God, What Have I Seen?” The Cult of the Group of Seven, 1920 to 1931 | 18410 Into Humanity instead of the Woods The 1930s in French and English Canada | 21111 Where Do We Go from Here? Modernism versus Landscape at Mid-Century | 236